


Absence makes the heart grow fonder

by AdAstra (smut_fairy)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Season/Series 04, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-12-16 08:29:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11824917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smut_fairy/pseuds/AdAstra
Summary: At first she can't blame him. He'd had a few years of peace, and then a few years of imprisonment. Being thrown from either into a war zone once again is enough to make any of them tense. But it would be nice if he would acknowledge that this is the first time he's seen her in six years. Even if he didn't miss her like she missed him, he could pretend to be glad she survived.-----aka, Bellamy is cold and distant toward Clarke, until suddenly he's not.





	1. Reunion

They fuck almost immediately.

Clarke had tried not to put too much thought into what it would be like, but in the moments during the six years of near isolation when she was at her most desperate to get off, she'd turned not to fond memories of previous lovers, not to the dead, but to fantasies of Bellamy. In these fantasies, even when he was rough with her it still wasn't just fucking between them. She would almost have called it lovemaking. 

They've never felt halfway about each other. In the beginning it was disdain; by the time Praimfiya came, it was a connection, a partnership unlike anything Clarke had ever known. Even if they'd had a hate fuck back at the dropship, she imagines they would have thrown their entire selves into it. Running their mouths with pointed jabs, Bellamy working her up with that infuriating smirk of his, doing everything they could to make the other lose their composure.

Sometimes when she fantasized about him, that's what she pictured. It was just as good, just as hot as the times when she would call up the Bellamy in her mind who she knew to be passionate and devoted, the one who was so strong, yet allowed himself to be vulnerable with her. Those fantasy encounters were more sensual, and they always left her feeling hollow when she would have to curl up in her bed alone afterward.

No matter how her imagination spun it over the six years they were apart, she never once thought that it would happen the way it does.

He's silent the whole time they're in the Rover. Raven is peppering her with questions about how she survived and what kind of resources does she have. Echo wants to know about the bunker. Monty, about the environment. Murphy and Emori are murmuring quietly to each other, and Harper is gritting her teeth against the sting of a bullet wound in her shoulder, the pain greater now that the adrenaline has worn off.

Madi is the only other silent one, though Clarke knows her well enough by now to recognize the signs of her watchfulness. To know that she's sizing up these newcomers, measuring their trustworthiness. 

Bellamy doesn't react to the news that the bunker is buried, doesn't look at her, doesn't say a word. He keeps his head bowed, his too-long hair masking his expression, his scruff masking the telling tic in his jaw. All she can see is the clench of his hands around his weapon. It's enough to know he hasn't let his guard down yet.

At first she can't blame him. He'd had a few years of peace, and then a few years of imprisonment. Being thrown from either into a war zone once again is enough to make any of them tense. But it would be nice if he would acknowledge that this is the first time he's seen her in six years. Even if he didn't miss her like she missed him, he could pretend to be glad she survived.

They get back to base camp, the bunker where they found guns six years ago. It wouldn't have been enough to protect her from the initial wave, but it's served her and Madi well as a hiding place the past few months.

"Remember this place?" She asks him, helping Madi lift one of the branches they use to camouflage the Rover from prying eyes. 

He grunts and shoulders past her, following Raven down the stairs.

"I thought you said he'd be happy to be back," Madi says. Clarke locks down her emotions, shoving them into the corner of her mind to be picked apart later.

"I thought he would be."

Madi gets them all set up with food and water and blankets while Clarke tends to Harper's wound. 

"Feels like home," she says dryly, barely even wincing as Clarke threads the needle through her skin.

"Weird to think that we spent so much of our lives in space, yet the ground feels like home."

"It's about where you want to be." Harper pauses. "And who you want to be with. They kept us separate, you know? I haven't seen some of them - Emori, Bellamy - since we were captured. It was just the seven of us for so long, it felt like my arm had been ripped off when they separated us."

Clarke doesn't say anything, just tries to keep her breathing even.

"I think it felt like that for him. When you - When we thought you died."

"It felt like that for me too," Clarke says, knotting off the thread and straightening up. She doesn't mention that the only one who felt as if they'd taken a part of her with them, ripped a part of her away, was Bellamy. She figures Harper probably knows.

"Welcome home," she says lamely, unsure of how else to continue.

"Thanks." Harper smiles tiredly at her. "It's good to be here. I think."

She checks the rest of them out, gives Emori some iron pills and Monty a supplement to help him sleep, tests Raven's mobility until she snaps at her that she's not in her best form at the moment and she'll be better if Clarke would let her get some rest. She puts Madi to bed, helps the rest of them find other rooms to retreat to. She does everything she can think of to put off whatever conversation she and Bellamy are going to have when she finally corners him alone, but in the end it doesn't matter. He sits at the table and stares down into his tumbler of whisky, the one Clarke had been saving for his return, and broods silently until everyone else has gone.

She leans against the wall and crosses her arms, finding that her hurt has settled into a cool anger.

"You look fucking awful."

His eyes flicker up to her then away again.

"You going to let me patch up your face?" She tries again, trying to distance herself with her healer's eye as she lets her eyes trace his features. He shrugs one shoulder. "You going to just sit there and die slowly of infection?"

He glares at her. "If I let you stitch me up will you leave me alone?"

Clarke's breath catches in her throat. The first words he's spoken to her, only to push her away.

"Whatever the hell you want," she mutters, going to retrieve her supplies.

He hasn't moved by the time she gets back, but his glass is empty and his face is carefully blank again. She tilts his chin up and to the side roughly, forcing him to expose the nasty slash on his temple to her. Head wounds bleed a lot, she knows, but this one is luckily pretty short and shallow. It just needs cleaning up. 

He keeps his eyes on the wall.

It gives Clarke a vindictive pleasure when he winces at the sting of the moonshine, some of her own she figured out how to make over the years. She pours more than she strictly needs to over the wound, hoping it will make him feel _something_  before she dabs at the blood-stained skin with a rag. He won't need stitches on this one, at any rate. It's just as well, because any upper hand she thinks she's got disappears when he flinches again at the touch of her fingers against his cheek.

To her horror, angry tears start to burn at the corners of her eyes. She presses her lips harder together, keeping her breathing even as she turns his face so she can see the other side.

His eyes catch on hers, seemingly against his will, as he rotates his head. Clarke pointedly turns his chin further toward the wall but she can see his eyes, hooded, emotionless, but watchful on her face. Well she's not giving him any more leverage. She's given him enough today. She wipes at the crusted blood on this side of his face with the rag but it doesn't appear to be his blood. 

On the ground less than a week, and he's already responsible for someone else's blood. She hates it for him, even as little as she recognizes this distant stranger before her.

"You're done," she says gruffly, clearing her throat. He doesn't thank her, doesn't make any moves to leave as she packs her things and starts rinsing out the rag.

When she turns to leave, he's staring at her full-on, expression inscrutable.

Just like that, the words she's been holding back burst out of her.

"I don't know what the fuck your problem is," she says in as forceful a voice she can manage without letting her voice carry. "If I've done something in the past six years to piss you off, it would be great if you could spell it out for me, because I don't have a fucking clue."

She moves in closer, until he has to lift his chin to keep eye contact with her. 

Silence lags between them as long as she can stand it. Long enough for it to become clear that he's not going to let her provoke him. That he won't rise to her bait. Even when she hated him, she knew exactly what buttons to push. Whoever this is in front of her, it's not the Bellamy Blake she knew. She hates the new version, but she doesn't know how to get the old one back. If she even can.

Clarke shakes her head in disgust.

"Let me know when you decide to give a shit again."

She turns away, but before she makes it to the door, his hand is wrapping around her upper arm and he's tugging her back into the room. He whirls her around, pushing her up against the wall in one motion. It's not gentle; Clarke's feet scrabble for purchase, her spine aching where it meets concrete. Her mouth falls open with indignance but before she can say a word he's slanting his lips over hers.

The kiss feels more like an argument. It's intense and angry and unforgiving, his facial hair rough on her skin with every movement. Clarke gasps into his mouth, bites at his lip on his next pass, hard enough to make him grunt. The sound is low and gravelly, and for all it's not even a word, she finds herself mentally adding it to the collection of sounds he's made in her direction since she saw him again. So much of what she did for six years was talk to him, and hope to hear his voice respond to her. She radioed him _every day_ , told him every story she had in her, every thought she could bring herself to articulate. She doesn't need this - whatever this is they're doing now, she doesn't even need the loving version from her sex dreams. All she wants now is to reconnect with her best friend, and it's obvious to her that this kiss is not that.

She thinks about breaking it, considers pushing him away, but her body revolts as if it recognizes him where her mind does not. Even as anger, hot and harsh, consumes her thoughts, her hands fist themselves in his shirt and pull him closer. Even as every cell in her body screams at her that this isn't really Bellamy, this isn't what she wants from him, the part of her that's been starved for human contact - for _his_ contact - strains closer to him.

She forces her tongue into his mouth, searching for any taste of apology, any hint of repentance. She finds only rage upon rage.

One of his hands works its way to her hair, threads itself deep and then tightens its grip until her body lights up with pleasure and pain alike. His other reaches for her leg, purposeful and not at all curious as it moves down, down, until he finds her knee and wrenches it up to hook around his hips. Clarke gasps when she feels his arousal, hot and hard between them. She's the one to hitch her other leg up, fingernails digging into his shoulder, concrete scraping against the bare skin of her back as her shirt is pushed up when she slides on the wall.

Bellamy's mouth fuses to her pulse point, teeth scraping, beard scratching. Even his lips are chapped and rough, sending frissons down her spine. He worries at her skin, enough to be rough but not enough to leave a mark. Not enough anyone would ever have to know he'd done it, Clarke thinks as she wrenches his head off so she can get her mouth on his again. 

This time, the kiss is more like a battle than an argument. They throw at each other everything they have in their arsenals, aiming not to convince, not to persuade, but to dominate. Her breathing is harsh and irregular as he sweeps retorts off her tongue. His fingers spasm on her hips when she tugs his lip between her teeth. He releases his hold on her with one hand, only to flick open the button on her pants. He slips the hand into her boyshorts, swiping his fingers rough and quick up her slit and coming away drenched. Clarke moans, infuriated that she's this turned on.

It's been a while since she's been touched by anyone this way. That's all it is, she tells herself. It's the only reason she's grinding down on his fingers as they circle her opening. The only reason she reaches for the bulge in his pants, freeing his erection as her fingernails dig into the tender skin at the back of his neck. The only reason when his lips slam into hers again, she kisses back hard enough she hopes it will bruise.

She's not aware she's broken his skin with her nails until he jerks. He removes his hand from her pants and encircles each of her wrists with his own hands, pinning them to the wall above her head. She can feel the evidence of her own arousal, sticky and wet where his fingers bite into her wrists. That's the hand he keeps restraining hers as the other comes down, wrapping around himself and guiding his dick to her opening. 

He pauses there, slicking himself up in her wetness. She can feel the head of his cock trail down, past where she's dripping and ready for him, as far as he can reach, and then back up until his tip grazes her clit and they both jerk. Clarke squirms against him, unsure whether he's teasing her or waiting for her to consent. If the latter, she thinks he picked a strange time to wait for a signal from her. In all probability, he simply wants to make her beg.

It's just as well she can't touch him. She'd either drink him in too wantonly and give herself away, or she'd be too harsh and be reminded every time she saw the marks she'd left. 

In the end, it doesn't matter. She's the one who uses the heel of her boot to press into his ass, to get him closer until he's sinking into her with a hiss.

She turns her head and clenches her teeth into his bicep, the closest part of him she can reach. She's afraid if she doesn't otherwise occupy her mouth, she'll cry out at the feeling of being filled by Bellamy's cock, thicker than it felt under her hand, with a curve that hits her in all the right spots. He's long too, and it feels as if he could continue pushing into her forever.

He can't, of course. But by the time he bottoms out, Clarke's senses are overloaded. She's so wet and wanting that when he withdraws and slams back into her, flesh meeting flesh with an obscene smack, there's no pain. Only toe-curling, eye-fluttering, wall-clenching pleasure.

Much as she'd like to, the flex of his arm as he settles into a steady pace of screwing proves to be too much for her to keep up with. Her teeth slip off his skin, leaving crescent-shaped indents in his skin that she knows will bruise. She catches his shirtsleeve in her teeth before she loses it completely, tugging at the already tattered material in an attempt to muffle her own sounds. Bellamy, breathing heavily already, exhales in frustration and pulls himself free, moving his hand to cover her mouth. His hand is large enough to cover her whole jaw, strong enough to hold her down and her head hits the concrete wall just hard enough it smarts. Her mouth is still open, her mumbled moans still audible, so he gives her his fingers to suck on and _fuck_  Clarke didn't know she was into that.

Her teeth scrape against his knuckles and he loses his momentum, thrusting helplessly when she flutters her tongue against the tips of his fingers. He presses down on her tongue in retaliation until Clarke almost gags, then relents, turning his attentions elsewhere and letting her suck on his fingers to silence herself.

Once her eyes stop watering, she has nothing to look at but him, nothing to do but glare since she's effectively rendered motionless. In an attempt to avoid her gaze, she thinks, he takes the zipper of her leather jacket between his teeth, tugging it down until he can get to the old Henley underneath. The buttons are next, his tongue meeting the dip between her breasts as he pops them open, and it's the hottest thing Clarke has ever experienced, right up until he tugs down her binding - her Ark-issued bra fell apart _years_  ago - and gets his mouth on her tits.

His scruff is harsh against the soft skin, his teeth even harsher as works hickeys into the tops of her breasts. Clarke can't help herself, she ruts her hips against his, undulating faster and faster as he picks up his rhythm.

They're starting to outpace themselves, both of them moving so quickly, thrusting so hard. She's desperate to come like she can't ever remember being before, and it seems as if he feels the same way if his panting is any indication. Finally, he bites down on her nipple, lashing his tongue over it in time with his thrusts, and that's what makes her come undone.

Her orgasm hits her like a spaceship hurtling toward earth, fast and hard and hot, as impossible to resist as a gravitational pull, slamming into her until it breaks her apart. She can't even tell if she's shut her eyes or if she blacked out for a moment, it's that intense. All she knows is the feeling of immobility, the helplessness to fight the tide. The ache in her wrists from straining against his fingers, the roughness of his fingers on her tongue, even as she's grateful for the assistance. The sweet sting of pleasure between her legs. The hard planes of his chest boxing her in.

She's still feeling the aftershocks when Bellamy pulls out of her, jacking himself through his own release and spurting come against the wall, his face buried in the crook of his own arm.

They stay like that for a moment, his weight holding her up as they both find their way back to themselves. But it doesn't last.  

He slides her to the side before dropping her, helping her, at least, to avoid sliding through the mess he's made. He tucks himself back into his pants as Clarke's knees buckle beneath her. She sprawls against the wall, panting and red-faced and cold. Bellamy robotically grabs the once-bloody rag to wipe down the wall, giving it more attention than he's given her all day, excepting the past fifteen minutes. He doesn't want anyone to know, she realizes again.

It doesn't hurt yet. She's still riding too high on endorphins. But she can tell by the quick dissipation of the afterglow that the hurt is coming, and quick.

If she'd had any hope at all that he'd say something to her - anything - that hope is dashed when he looks her over once, clinical, then stands and walks away. 

She watches him disappear down the hall, left with nothing but a new tear in her heart and an ache between her legs.


	2. Survival

What happened in the kitchen was a mistake.

It was also an accident, but Bellamy knew he'd have a harder time selling that story to anyone, even himself. He hadn't meant to kiss her, or feel her up, or learn what she felt like when she came around him. He'd been planning to grit out an apology when he went to catch her arm, only...

Well, he's never had the greatest self-control when it comes to Clarke Griffin.

Not back when he was determined to hate her, the self-righteous, know-it-all princess who stood up to him when few else would. He told himself he despised her, and look how that turned out.

Not when she was his partner, the person he counted on most. He told himself he was angry with her time and time again, but he could never manage to make it stick. He could never manage to keep his mouth shut when she stood before him with that imploring gaze and that jut of her chin that said _let me in. I'm strong enough to share your burdens. You don't have to shoulder them alone._

Not when she was a ghost who haunted him for six years, both in waking hours and in sleep. He told himself he was done mourning for her. That dwelling on what could have been, what should have been, was not what she would have wanted. That he needed to focus on keeping his community of six alive, on escaping from Eligius, on surviving. Yet she followed him everywhere he went, not always in the foreground of his thoughts but always present. Always there, wondering why he'd left her behind. Why, after all the times they'd managed to keep each other alive, all the scars on their souls for the sake of their people... why he couldn't save her just once more.

The first time he saw her in almost seven years, she was flinging herself into harm's way for him, for their people. One Clarke against an army of Eligius miners. They'd never stood a chance. His heart had leapt to see her there, but in the same beat it broke again.

He tells himself that he won't let her back in. That if he keeps her at arm's length, he'll never have to mourn her again. That if he shuts her out, he'll never be able to be the death of her again.

It's too soon for him to admit that there's no point trying to keep her out of his heart, because she never left it in the first place.

He'd really meant to stick to the plan, too. To make her hate him, or at least make her stop caring. But the moment his skin came into contact with hers, it was like every ounce of his willpower went up in flames. He'd been consumed by her, by having her, willing and wanting in his arms. But he couldn't let her touch him the way he wanted her to, couldn't tell her all the things he'd been biting back for years.

He justified it to himself with the logic that, at least if he was giving her an orgasm, he was giving her something good. Something that wouldn't hurt her.

It wasn't strong logic, but then, he wasn't really thinking with his brain in that moment.

It hurt him to leave her there, to not break down and apologize for everything, to confess his sins to her, to lay himself before her completely bare. But he wouldn't put that on her. He could give her a moment of ecstasy, of relief, of release, but he couldn't give her himself, or she'd once more be caught up in the destruction that trails him everywhere he goes.

So he reminds himself, time and time again, that what happened in the kitchen was both an accident and a mistake.

As was the way he made her come on his fingers up against a tree only a few days later, her hand curled around his dick, her pants around her knees, his mouth busy leaving a bruise behind her ear where no one could see.

As was the time he found out what she tasted like when she was sprawled out on the hood of the rover, giving her three in quick succession as she grasped desperately at the windshield, leaving behind handprints he would wipe away after everyone else had gone to bed that night.

As was the time he took her from behind, biting down on her shoulder to muffle his moans, Clarke planting her hands on the bathroom counter and thrusting back against him every bit as viciously as he fucked into her.

It was fucking, plain and simple, the barest glimpse of everything he ever wanted from her and also the assurance that he would never get to have it. For every time they parted, damp with sweat and arousal, he could feel her pulling further and further away from him.

Well, good. That's how it needed to be.

And he clings to that belief, right up to the point where she falls off a fucking cliff.

One minute she's there and the next she's _gone_ , the ground dropping away beneath her and sending Bellamy's stomach plummeting along with it.

"Clarke!"

He's the first one who makes it to the edge, scrambling on his hands and knees to see where she'd landed, how, in what state. To his staggering relief and continued anxiety, she's somehow landed on a ledge not too far down. Her limbs all look to be at the correct angles, and she's glaring up at him as if he's the one to blame. As if she hadn't been going to get a better look at the Eligius encampment and tripped on a wayward root sticking out of the ground.

"Don't move," he calls down, his heart in his throat.

"Where am I gonna go?"

He looks back at the others. Echo is holding Madi around the waist, restraining her. Monty and Harper are back at the bunker, and Emori is still weak from malnutrition. Murphy catches his eye.

"Just like old times," he smirks. Bellamy is inclined to agree.

Only, unlike old times, this time around they have a sturdy rope rather than fraying seat belts, and they have Raven in the rover, ready to tow him and Clarke up. He lowers himself slowly and she's still scowling when he reaches her.

"There's nothing wrong with my arms," she says, hobbling toward him. "You didn't have to come down."

"Is it your ankle?"

"Wow, a full sentence," she says mockingly. He grinds his teeth and takes what he's earned. "Which one of us is the doctor here? I'm fine. Let's go."

It's slow going, but Raven gets them back up the cliff, Murphy hauling them up by the collar of their jackets when they get close enough for him to reach. Bellamy is quickly knocked out of the way by a blur of an eleven year old throwing herself at Clarke, for which he can't blame her. His whole emotionally detached plan failed as totally and epically as Shumway's let's-assassinate-Jaha idea had so many years ago. He'd been shutting her out to no avail; the moment he thought he'd lost her again had been just as painful, just as agonizing as the first time around.

Everyone clamors around her, calling her a dumbass and hugging her tightly but Bellamy backs away. His heart still hasn't returned to its normal pace, his mind still reeling with the realization that she means as much to him now as she ever has. Echo gives him a funny look but doesn't follow as he turns away and tries to center himself again.

As has become their norm, Clarke doesn't speak to him or look at him or acknowledge him in any way while the others are around. When they get back, he stays behind to cover the rover again while Murphy and Emori help her hobble down the stairs.

When he turns to go inside, he sees Raven and Echo leaning against the wall, watching him with their arms crossed. He crosses his right back. He may not be able to read their minds like he used to with Clarke, but the only time the two of them gang up on anyone together is when that person is him, and it's an issue nobody is brash enough (Monty and Harper) or cares enough (Murphy and Emori) to address.

"What."

"You tell us," says Raven evenly.

"What's going on with you and Wanheda?"

"Don't call her that. And nothing is going on with us."

"Maybe, maybe not." Raven pushes off the wall and takes a step closer. "But something is going on with you where Clarke is concerned. So spill."

"Mind your own business, Reyes."

"You make it our business when we need you guys to survive."

"Did any of you die today?" He looks between them, eyebrows raised. "No. You're welcome. Good talk, let's never do it again."

"You can't run from this forever," Echo calls after him. She probably meant that metaphorically, Bellamy thinks as he makes his way to his compartment. Although with Echo, one never could quite tell.

When he gets to his quarters, he's surprised to find his light on. Of course, when he swings the door open it's Clarke inside, sitting on his bed, spoiling for a fight. He considers walking out, away, somewhere else, but Raven and Echo are out there wanting to have this same conversation, and all things considered, he'd rather have it with Clarke.

Well, he'd rather not have it at all, but that doesn't seem to be an option.

He closes the door behind him.

Clarke doesn't move at first. Her eyes - so blue, the color of the sky as seen from Earth, a color he'd missed so much in space - blaze with untempered anger. With hurt and sorrow, and that strength that feels too big for any one person to reasonably wield. It's too much. Too many emotions. Bellamy tries to shut them out, leans back against the door and tilts his chin up.

A silent challenge.

Before he even knows it, Clarke is upon him. Her hands slam against his chest, not painfully, but almost. Enough to knock him off balance. Were it not for the door at his back, he'd have tumbled to the ground.

In the same motion, she nudges his chin up with her nose, sinking her teeth into the taut cord of muscle in his neck. The one strained from keeping his jaw clenched against the torrent of apologies, of pleas for her forgiveness, of longing to know what the past six years have been like for her. What hells she was subjected to because of him, what miracles she pulled from irradiated air in order to survive. A harsh breath escapes his lips as she laves her tongue over the now-tender spot.

He tilts his head further, feels the stretch of it, offers himself to her. She growls in approval, twisting fingers in his hair in a counterpoint of sensation that has his eyes nearly rolling back in his head. He slips his own hands under the hem of her shirt, resting on the bare skin at her sides where he can feel scrapes from her fall, scars of old. Where he can feel her ribs, the rise and fall of her chest with her breaths, the pulsing of her blood through her veins. Sure reminders that she didn't die today. That she didn't die back then. She lives. Victorious.

He lets the blunt edges of his nails sink into her soft skin, reminding himself what they are to each other. Her breath catches and she leans back to tear her shirt off.

Bellamy is on her in a second, pushing them across his small room toward the cot in the corner, yanking her feet out from under her even as he controls their fall. She gasps as she lands on her back, her ankles - injured and unhurt - locking around his waist. His shins knock painfully against the metal frame of the bed, her hand smacking into the wall behind her head as she rips his shirt over his head, but they're too far gone to mind.

Bellamy has already lost himself in her breasts, reviving the mark he'd left last time that has begun to fade, his nails scraping along the undersides so lightly she can't help the shiver that wracks her body. One of Clarke's hands makes its way from his back down into his pants, her own nails digging into his ass as her thumb brushes gently against the divots at the base of his spine, the ones that make his hips stutter forward as if upon command.

He wraps his lips around her nipple and sucks _hard_ , giving her his touch where she wanted it at last, and she keens. He's about to move to the other breast, to tease her with the same almost-attention when she gives his shoulders another push, this time off of her. Bellamy flops over onto the cot and freezes. He's starting down the rabbit hole of wondering where he might have crossed an uncrossable line when Clarke follows him over, slinging one leg across his torso and pinning him beneath her.

"I'm fucking you this time," she breathes directly into his ear, voice rasping and mouth hungry as it sets to work on his jaw, his shoulders, his chest, anywhere but his lips.

Bellamy hooks his fingers into the waistband of her leggings, working them over her knees and off her legs with difficulty. Clarke makes it no easier on him, not shifting her weight, not stopping the nip of her teeth on his skin. When he finally untangles them from beneath her, her boyshorts lost somewhere inside them, he can feel her wetness against his abdomen. She kisses down his chest, migrating further down his body as she goes, and the slick, hot slide of her makes him have to clench his jaw against a groan.

His hand flexes on her hip, the other winding into her hair and pulling steadily at the roots. Never has he been so passive in his sex life. Not with other women, and certainly not in fucking Clarke. Yet now, all he can do is lay back and take whatever she has planned for him. If he tried to regain the ground he's given up, he knows it would no longer be simple fucking. Not after she almost died today. The part of him that revered her, wanted to worship her body with his own, had broken out of its cage the moment she fell out of his sight. He hasn't had a chance to lock it back down yet, so he simply tightens his hold, hopes she thinks it harsh and dispassionate, pure lust, when really he cannot bring himself to loosen his grip lest she disappear again.

Clarke's nails drag along the vee of his hips, trailing red marks all the way down his thighs as she removes his pants. His eyes flutter closed as her breath falls on his cock, a warm, gentle torment when she bypasses it to clamber back up his body.

He expects her lips on his neck again, knows she's found the spot that goes straight to his dick when she flutters her tongue over it, but she continues her victory march until she's directly above him. She hovers tantalizingly close but just out of reach. Her smell is sharp and familiar, intoxicating. He wants nothing more than to tug her down atop him, to get his tongue into those glistening folds, but this isn't his spoils of war. He's been utterly defeated and can't bring himself to mind. Not at this moment.

His hands curl over her ankles, one swollen beneath his fingers. He gentles his hold with that hand, the fingers of his other pressing firmly into the muscle of her calf. Begging, almost, as he pants up into her.

Clarke holds out for another moment longer before she lowers herself onto him, hands in his hair directing him where she wants his attentions. He swipes his tongue over her, skating up her slit in a zagging motion that has her pressing down further onto his tongue.

She nudges him up toward her clit and he submits, curling his tongue over the nub and working it in gentle circles. One of her hands leaves him and a moment later he hears a wanton moan spill from her lips, the stuttering gasp he knows means her breasts are being played with. He moans into her, flickers his tongue faster over her as she rocks her hips back and forth over him. With each motion she drags herself further over his lips, brings her entrance closer and closer to him, yet it seems to catch her by surprise when he tilts his chin to push her further, dips his tongue into the well of her arousal and has to moan again at her taste.

"Again," she demands, grinding dirty and slow now on his face. He stiffens his tongue for her, lets her set the pace with the circle of her hips on him, lets her use him as she will. When she finds the path that has his nose bumping her clit and his tongue hitting her just right, her breaths begin to quicken, coming higher and shorter. Bellamy can feel her begin to tighten and curls his tongue forward, counters the motion of her hips with a shake of his head, and then she's coming apart above him.

He keeps it up until she pushes him away. When she moves back down his body he tries to follow, tries to sit up, but she stops him with a hand on his chest.

And in the next breath she's sinking down onto his iron-hard cock, taking him all the way to the hilt.

A litany of swears fills the room, his or hers, Bellamy doesn't have the presence of mind to tell. Her hand holds him in place as she takes what she needs from him, rising up and then taking him in again, rocking forward, bracing herself on him for leverage.

Bellamy knows he won't last long. Not tonight. Not like this. He tilts his hips as hers swivel forward so that he hits a spot inside her that's sure to make her unravel. Clarke's eyes go dark and she leans back to find that spot again, her breath hitching with every slap of skin on skin. He can tell the moment she finds it because her whole body goes rigid, and he makes sure to thrust extra hard on his next pass.

She grips the edge of the cot as if it's the only thing tethering her to the world, skin flushed and glowing with exertion, with glory. At this angle, spread beneath her, Bellamy can see the whole line of her body - the crown of gold atop her head, the arch of pleasure in her neck, her luxurious breasts, the musculature of her legs, all the way down to the place where they're joined. Where he disappears into her over and over again, where she's clutching like a vice around him.

It's all he can do to reach for her clit, to set his thumb firmly upon it as he gives one last thrust. And then the tension within him, that string so tightly wound, is coming undone. He feels as if his soul leaves his body as he empties himself inside her for the first time. Why not, he wonders. Why couldn't that be true, when he's given her everything else.

He's dimly aware that Clarke is coming too, pulsing around him and breathing heavily. She slumps sideways into the wall, his dick soft and slipping out of her.

She doesn't look at him.

They lie there like that for a few minutes, both trying to pick up the pieces of themselves that shattered with the force of their orgasm.

"You said my name today."

Bellamy props himself up on his elbows. She isn't looking at him, is staring at the wall as if she doesn't really see it. As if it might not even be there.

"Do you know how many times I imagined hearing your voice in the past six years?" Her voice is a whisper and every word is a knife in his side. "I radioed you every day. I never lost hope." Her eyes cut to him. "And now you're back, but... you aren't really. It feels stupid, but I still get the urge to talk to that radio. To imagine what my best friend would say if he was here."

There are no words. He reaches for them, but he can't find them. Wouldn't know what role to be playing anyways. Every one of his instincts tells him to comfort her, even as his mind tries to remember why pulling away had seemed like such a good idea. But it doesn't matter, because there's nothing to say.

He stays quiet as she redresses, as she laces her boots and finger-combs her hair.

Finally, as she reaches for the handle, his words find him.

"I thought it would make a difference. If you hated me. If we weren't... like we used to be. Then at least if you died, it wouldn't be my fault. And maybe it wouldn't make me feel like a piece of myself had died with you."

He can't see her face, but her body stills, tension ratcheting up her spine.

"But it didn't do me any good today," he continues, his voice breaking. "The moment you fell, I thought - I should have been there to catch you. Like that first day on the ground. I should have been by your side."

He makes himself stop talking. Makes himself wait for her to say something, anything. The longer the quiet festers between them, the more dread piles up in the pit of his stomach.

"It doesn't help," she says at last, still not looking back at him. "Knowing why you're pushing me away. Not if you keep doing it."

"I don't know how to stop," he admits.

"You try. That's all there is to it."

Such a Clarke answer, he wants to snap. Bellamy has done nothing but try his whole life, and it's never worked the way it was supposed to.

"I can't," he says, not knowing exactly what it is he means. Can't try, maybe. Can't set himself up for failure. Can't put her in harm's way. Can't lose her again.

Clarke takes a rattling breath.

"Then I guess we've said all there is to say."

She doesn't look back as she leaves, the door closing with a quiet click behind her. Bellamy falls back on the cot as if wounded. Maybe he is. It certainly feels as if his heart is bleeding.

He'd set out to make Clarke hate him and it looks like he succeeded.

If only he knew how to fix what he's broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your kind words and kudos on the last chapter! I hope you liked this one as well ;)


	3. Waiting

"Can I ask you something?"

Clarke doesn't allow herself to react, though she can't stop the automatic stiffening of her spine. A subtle glance tells her that Madi is still sitting on the bench between Monty and Raven. But it's Bellamy she's talking to, if the uncertainty in her voice is anything to go by.

They haven't spoken since she left his quarters a few nights back. Not that they spoke all that much before, but they'd been communicating in other ways. The past few weeks had felt to Clarke as if they were simply too far apart, that if only she could find the path back to him, they could work things out. Now the gap between them feels unbridgeable.

She hears him clear his throat.

"You can ask," he says, gruff. But not as harsh as he'd been with Clarke since his return. Whatever else he might have become, he was still soft when it came to children.

Clarke grips her spoon tighter, wondering what's on Madi's mind. She's observant, so it could be any number of things.

"How come Kronos didn't notice he had five grown up gods in his belly instead of six?" She asks. Clarke relaxes a bit. "And how did they all fit in there? And why didn't they die when he ate them?"

The noise Bellamy makes is not exactly laughter, but it's sharp, delighted surprise that makes Clarke's pulse throb.

"You know some Greek myths, huh?"

"Clarke told them to me," Madi says, swinging her legs as she scrapes at the last vestiges of the stew at the bottom of her bowl. She's so preoccupied, she probably doesn't see the way his hands clench on his own utensils, or the way Clarke hasn't breathed since she first spoke. "But she said you knew them better. I have a lot of questions I had to keep until you came down."

The chatter of the others has lulled and Clarke can feel more than one pair of eyes on her back. She keeps her own trained on her food.

Bellamy clears his throat.

"Well," he says, in a warmer tone than Clarke has heard in six years. "You see, Kronos was a Titan..."

Beside her, Murphy nudges her elbow.

"You going to eat that?"

"Which one of us caught this rabbit?" Harper grumbles from down the row. "If anyone gets her leftovers, it should be me."

"Which one of us cooked it?"

"If by cooking you mean burning the hell out of, then - "

"Hey, I'm just a little out of practice. Only so much you can do with fucking algae."

"There aren't going to be any leftovers," Clarke mumbles, scraping the dregs into her mouth and letting her bowl fall with a clank. "I'm going to go work on the Rover. It's been making some weird sounds lately."

She's halfway to the surface when she hears Raven's uneven tread behind her. She pauses at the base of the stairs, eyebrows raised.

"What?" Raven says, reaching back to tighten her ponytail. "You think you get to hog all the fun? No way, I'm coming with you."

Clarke feels the ghost of a smile cross her face.

"I suppose I could use an assistant."

Raven's laugh is bright, her smile wicked, and it awakens a part of Clarke she thought was long dead. The part that remembers how young she really is, that knows for all she's had to take care of herself and Madi for so long, she can stand to loosen her control a little.

"Big talk, Griffin. Let's see if you can back it up."

After a thorough inspection, even Raven has to admit that Clarke has done a good job with the Rover's upkeep. By the time they come back inside, she's warm with Raven's praise, covered in grease stains, and smells like a gas can.

Raven begs off for a shower, but since hot water is scarce (and scarcer still when more than one person is using it at a time), Clarke opts to get a drink of water from the kitchen area while she's waiting her turn.

Monty and Emori and Harper are there, some kind of card game or other spread out on the table before them. Monty gives her an appraising look when she walks in, but relaxes when she smiles.

"Where is everybody?"

"Echo got tired of being cooped up so she and John went looking for herbs," says Emori, frowning as she trades a card in her hand for one from the table.

"Did they take Madi with them?"

"No," Monty says, trading a look with Harper that Clarke can't read. "She and Bellamy are washing laundry."

Her heart stutters at his name but she keeps her outward reactions on lockdown.

"Madi? Voluntarily doing a chore? That doesn't sound likely."

"She had a lot of questions for him," Emori shrugs. "And he doesn't like to be idle."

"Never has," Harper mutters, and Clarke flashes back to the 'training drills' he used to run for those who picked up guard duties back at the dropship. The times he would work and work until he passed out on the nearest surface.

She swallows hard, pushing the memories down with the burning in her throat.

"I think it's my turn in the shower soon."

"Good." Monty says, his voice light. "You smell worse than recycled urine."

Clarke makes a face. "Recycled urine?"

"What happens in space stays in space."

"Yeah, please keep all recycled urine away from here."

The path back to her room takes her directly past the room with the big wash basin in it. As she draws near, Clarke finds herself slowing, straining to make words out of the steady rumble of Bellamy's voice, juxtaposed with Madi's childlike trill.

"...goddess of the hunt," he says. Clarke pauses, just in the shadows beyond the doorway. "Unlike Zeus, who had all the kids, Artemis didn't have any."

"Why not? She's the best one," Madi protests. "I'd want to be her daughter out of any of them."

"She swore off men and marriage. She was happier doing her thing on her own. Or with her huntresses."

Madi is quiet for a moment.

"I think maybe Clarke was too. Happier when it was just me and her, I mean."

"You think?" There's no discernible change in his tone, which is maddening.

"I thought you coming back would make her happy. But I think all it does is make her worry more. She's bad at not worrying."

"Yeah, she is. I'm sure she's glad to have us all here, though. She probably still worried about us when we were in space. Even more when we were late coming back."

"I meant just you. You're her favorite." Clarke stops breathing and she thinks Bellamy might too. Or maybe she's hoping. "But I don't get why. You guys never even talk to each other."

There's a long pause before Bellamy says, "We used to."

Each word is like another stone being placed upon her chest. Like she's the one trapped under the rubble of Praimfiya, not the bunker. As if the life she used to live, the one she's clung to for years now, is finally crumbling, crushing her beneath it.

"Why don't you anymore?"

"I don't know," he lies. "I hope we will one day. Did Clarke ever tell you about how much Athena and Poseidon hated each other?"

Clarke darts past the doorway before she can get caught lurking, the two of them so wrapped up in their stories that they don't even notice her. Her breathing is shallow, her arms wrapped tight around her body.

_If you died, it wouldn't be my fault_ , he'd said.

How twisted things got in his mind.

She'd always known he had a talent for burdening himself with more guilt than he could rightfully lay claim to, but she hadn't thought her death would weigh on his conscience for so long, to such great effect. She'd told him to use his head. That last conversation with him was a memory she revisited time and time again for years. She would have thought it would alleviate his guilt, if he'd had any. She'd hoped he would have known that she wanted them to make it. To live.

Yet she can't look past her own hurt. Can't continue to bear the way he's treating her, just because he himself is in pain. Not when he isn't willing to try.

As the icy water rains down on her from the shower head, Clarke lets her tears spill over. This way, there will be no evidence of it when she emerges. In this moment, she doesn't have to keep it together for everyone else's sake. For a few minutes, she can simply fall apart.

\-----

Bellamy's nose finds the hollow of her cheek as his hips find the angle that makes her breath hitch with every thrust. Gentle kisses along her gaping jaw ratchet her pleasure even higher. Clarke turns her head toward him, searching for a kiss but only getting his teeth, nibbling at her parted lips.

His fingers strum at her clit, the friction of his calluses making her gasp and pant. He settles into a lethargic circle of his thumb on her button as his hips slow their rhythm. When Bellamy's other hand pinches at her nipple, rolls it between his thumb and forefinger in time with his methodical fucking, Clarke feels her orgasm start to build inch by inch. Every grind of his cock inside her knocks a helpless noise from her lips. Every press of his thumbs makes her walls spasm around him.

He softens his hold as she nears her peak. The dirty rock of him into her keeps her on the edge even as his lightening up prevents her from tipping over it. Clarke's gasps turn into whines and she tries to buck up against him, to force his hands into giving her the release she craves. He won't have it, the weight of his legs over hers restricting her movement.

"I told you." Even his whisper in her ear is smug. If Clarke had any presence of mind right now, she would find a way to retaliate. "I want to hear you beg for it."

"I thought you were making the past six weeks up to me," she says, stuttering over the words at a particularly deep thrust.

"I'm making the past six _years_ up to you." He kisses the apple of her cheek. "You deserve the best fucking climax of your life, baby. Six years of getting yourself off? We have a lot to make up for."

_Baby?_ Where did that come from?

Clarke is too incoherent to wonder for long. Bellamy's fingers dip into her folds, collecting some of her arousal and spreading it around her clit, drawing spirals that grow ever nearer without touching her where she needs him.

"Please, Bellamy," she whimpers. He slips his tongue into her mouth, curls it around her own as if anchoring her. "Please," she says again when he lets her go. "Please."

"You're okay." He noses at her jaw, tilting it up and away from him so he can trace the veins in her neck with his tongue. "I know you want it, babe. I know." He thrusts into her and stills, the hand not on her breast holding her firm. Motionless. He's buried so deep inside her Clarke starts to sob, frustrated and needy and losing her mind with how full she is.

"Fuck, I hate you," she tells him, writhing in anguish.

He draws out of her in one sharp motion, and that's far worse than having him unmoving inside of her. Her walls clench down on nothing, arousal trickling out of her entrance. He rubs his cock along her slick folds and she keens. Bellamy kisses the juncture of her neck and shoulder.

"No you don't," he murmurs. "Tell me how you really feel, Clarke. Tell me, and I'll make you come."

"I need you."

"Uh-uh." His moves his thumb, bearing down hard on her clit for just a moment, a tease, before he lightens the pressure again. "Might be true, but it's not the whole truth. Is it?"

He licks into Clarke's mouth as if trying to draw the words out of her. She can do little more than pant against him.

"I missed you," she grits out. His hum in her ear sends all kinds of shivers down her spine.

"Missed you too. But also not what I was looking for."

She can feel him still hard and ready for her, ready to make good on his promise. She knows she'll come hard when she comes. It'll be a bone-rattling, blood-rushing, _loud_  orgasm. It's molten in her veins, swirling inside her, hot and slow, the kind that will feel both like a miracle when she erupts and as wrecking as any natural disaster.

And Clarke _needs_  it. She knows Bellamy will draw it out until she gives in. Until she can't take it any longer. As frustrated as she is with this game of his, as much as she doesn't want to relinquish her pride, she knows that's what it will take.

"I love you," she says at last. "I love you. I love you. _Please_ \- "

He pinches her nipple, grinds his fingers on her clit, and sheathes himself to the hilt inside of her all at the same time, but it's the words he muffles into her neck that sends her careening into oblivion. The scrape of his teeth, the rumble of his voice, the weight of the sentiment that propels her up and up and beyond anywhere she's gone before.

Clarke jerks awake, startled enough she sits all the way up. Her face is aflame, her body laced with a fine layer of sweat. She can feel the wetness between her thighs, the racing of her heart as she realizes that she's not in Bellamy's bed at all. Nor is he here with her. She's alone, and it was only a dream.

She lies back and flops an arm across her face. If she could think of anything else, anything at all, perhaps she could get back to sleep tonight.

As it is, the only thing she can think about is his body between her thighs and the declaration he'd moaned into her skin, wishing it was real.

\-----

Madi doesn't let up with the Bellamy-pestering, and with each passing day he returns a little more to the man Clarke used to know. He still might avoid her gaze, still might keep a heavy piece of furniture between them at all times, but he smiles more, laughs, teases Raven, jokes with Monty, gives Murphy a harder and harder time.

Even after watching all of that, Clarke is caught by surprise when he slides next to her on a log one night around the campfire.

Everyone else seems taken aback as well. Eyes continually flit toward them and then away, conversations carried too low for Clarke to make out (leading to the natural assumption that she and Bellamy are the subject matter).

She doesn't say anything to him, nor he to her. They chat with whoever is sitting on their other side until the fire is reduced to smoldering embers and some begin to retreat to their beds.

"Another?"

Bellamy's voice is raspy with moonshine, his eyes on her empty cup rather than her face. It recalls memories of Clarke's dream and she feels her face redden.

"No thanks. I'm good."

He nods and stands. As he goes, she notes that a bit of the Blake swagger has returned to his gait. She's glad for it, even if she can't yet trust it.

The next day he seeks her out again at lunch, or at least doesn't deliberately distance himself when the next empty seat is directly across from her. Once more, they don't speak to each other, but after a while Clarke can feel the tension leaking from her posture.

When he stands to excuse himself, he collects everyone's empty dishes. He's careful to keep from brushing his fingers against hers and she's glad for it despite the needles pricking at her lungs. Like she's been deprived of something essential, and her body doesn't know how to compensate.

The day after that, he passes her gun to her. The one after, he pours a second cup of water when he sees her going for the faucet. The next, he takes the passenger seat when they all climb into the Rover.

It's incremental progress for which Clarke is grateful. Yet she can't help but long for the days when he'd thoughtlessly correct her stance as she learned to shoot; when he'd intentionally let his hands linger as he handed her something - an offer of comfort, a reminder that he was there with her; when it was a given that he'd find his way to her side and not a novelty.

"Why are you and Bellamy so weird?" Madi asks her one night.

Clarke had been steeling herself for the question, or one like it, ever since she eavesdropped on Madi's conversation with Bellamy in the laundry. She could see that with every strained interaction between them, the question had been festering in Madi's mind.

"How do you know we're weird? Maybe this is how we are. I told you we hated each other at first."

"Or maybe you just forgot how to be friends. Like how he forgot how to drive."

"He didn't _forget_. He just had to remind himself how the Rover works. Once he tried a couple of times, he figured it out."

"So maybe he just has to try to remember how to be your friend."

_I can't_. Those two words have haunted Clarke since the breath that carried them off his lips.

But he has been trying. At least, it seems as if he has.

"Maybe," she says, evasive, and changes the subject. But the thought takes root in the corners of her mind, like a weed she can't entirely rid herself of.

It's there as he offers to throw her laundry in with his. It's there when he starts trying to speak to her, singular syllables evolving into phrases, into brisk sentences. It's there when her eye catches on him to find him already watching her, rather than keeping his gaze averted as he had for over a month.

She can't help her constant awareness of him, and where he is, and what he's doing, but she starts not to tense when he walks into a room. Not to carefully monitor her expressions or his. Not to fear that the wrong tone or word might send him retreating back behind those walls he constructed around himself.

It's that seed of hope, blooming against all odds, that has Clarke's feet carrying her to him in the middle of the night after a particularly good day when they'd come up with a new strategy to find out what Eligius is up to. A strategy they all imagined together, Bellamy contributing as much as anyone else, and even backing her plays once or twice.

If he's trying, so can Clarke, she figures. So she raises her fist.

And knocks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if there was a delay in getting this one posted. I really wanted to get it right and I hope I did. Thank you all for leaving such awesome comments on the last chapter!


	4. Loving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote and rewrote this chapter several times, adding in scenes and taking them out. I hope this heals all the hearts I broke with the rest of this fic. 
> 
> Also, [this (NSFW)](http://less-stress-moresex.tumblr.com/post/165624387227) and [this (SFW)](https://youtu.be/5-xVwxqjNyI) are what I kept coming back to for ~aesthetic~ inspiration with this chapter. In case you're into that sort of thing.

"Clarke?"

Bellamy shifts on his feet, hiding himself half behind his door. He'd been expecting the worst - someone delivering news of an Eligius attack the first scenario to cross his mind - or at the very least, something mundane. Instead, he opens the door and his heart cracks in his chest to see Clarke standing there with her chin set like she's posturing with more confidence than she really feels. Indomitable.

It isn't real, of course. Somewhere over the last six years he lost sight of the fact that she's just as vulnerable and human as anyone else. For six years he built her memory up in his mind, turned her into a legend larger than life, and then returned to earth and found that she'd not only survived Praimfiya but thrived despite the desolation around her.

He'd forgotten she was just a person. That she could be hurt.

That he could be the one who hurt her.

In the moment when she'd finally confronted him, he'd realized for the first time that she was hurting. He thought he was giving her the best thing he knew how to give: moments of bliss, of transcendence in an otherwise painful world. Giving her an escape from the path of destruction that trailed after him everywhere he went.

She'd walked away and he realized that he'd hurt her again. That he'd lost her again. Remorse and regret greeted him like the old familiar faces they were, and he knew he'd do whatever he could to make it right. He didn't think he had the capacity to try anymore, but he knew that whatever meager offerings he could scrounge up, he'd give, until he had nothing left.

More than anything, he'd given her space. It comes as a welcome shock to his system that she's the one to inch closer.

_Or maybe she's here to tell you to back off_ , a voice in his head mutters. _Maybe she wants you gone. Maybe she just needs whatever the bunker equivalent is of borrowing a cup of sugar. Don't get ahead of yourself, asshole._

"Can I come in?"

"Of course."

He steps aside, suddenly feeling awkward about his state of undress. It isn't as if she's never seen him with his shirt off, yet there's something about having been called out of bed, freshly showered and in his pajama pants, that adds a different level of intimacy to this conversation.

Not to mention that she shuts the door behind her and sinks tentatively onto his bed.

He sits as far from her as he can get, having no idea what to say and even less idea what she wants from him.

"Is everything okay?" He asks at last.

Her eyes dart to him and away again.

"Not really. Maybe. I don't know."

"Thanks for clearing that up."

The comment slips from his lips before he can swallow the words. To his surprise, it makes her lips twitch.

"Communication hasn't been our strong suit lately. At first it felt like we were just... not on the same page. But now it feels like we're reading completely different books."

"I'm so fucking sorry." Any trace of humor drains from her face. He wants to reach out to her but restrains himself. "I know it doesn't fix anything, but I - I hate that I hurt you. You don't deserve to be treated that way."

"Don't I?"

Her question comes out bitter. Bellamy slides closer, just a few inches, and flexes his hands in his lap so he won't take her hand like he wants to.

"Maybe this is what I get," she continues, a razor-sharp edge of despair to her voice that slices him open. "This is my curse. I've taken so many lives, so the universe or karma or whoever decides these things takes away all the people I - all the people I care about."

"Fuck that," he says instantly.

She shakes her head and presses her lips together, the most telling sign that she's trying not to lose her composure. How could he have forgotten how human she is? How deep her hurt runs? He clenches his jaw and slides closer still. As the distance closes in it becomes harder and harder for him not to take her into his arms, not to offer whatever comfort he can. He reminds himself that he's lucky she's even in the same room as him after the way he's acted.

"I'm serious, Clarke. That's bullshit. This world fucks everybody over, good and bad. I was an ass to you and it has nothing to do with some cosmic balance."

His throat closes up with the need to convince her of this. He strains for a normal tone.

"You care so much. More than anyone I've ever known. Maybe we don't always agree on what's right, but the lengths you're willing to go to for the people you care about... You deserve to have someone who cares about you that much. Who would do anything for you, and never treat you the way I did."

She's quiet for long enough he starts to worry.

"I know you believe that," she says at last. "But believing it and acting like it are two different things. I don't know how to trust that you won't wake up one day and realize that it's too much, or I'm not - Not worth trying for."

_Try_ , she'd told him. And he'd rejected the idea. His jaw jumps.

"You _are_ worth it. And I've been trying. Or trying to try."

"I know." Her hands tighten their clasp on each other, knuckles bone white, and he wonders if she's holding herself back too. "That's why I'm here."

"I'm glad you are."

He reaches for her hands, slow and deliberate so she can pull away if she wants to. She doesn't and he covers both of hers, her grip unclenching under the blanket of his hand.

"I want to earn your trust back. I don't know how, but - I'll do whatever it takes."

Her hands shift and he thinks she's withdrawing, but then her fingers wrap securely around his.

"I just need time," she says softly. "And you. I need my partner back, my best friend. The rest will follow."

"I'm here," he promises, squeezing her hand. She squeezes back and lets go.

"And I don't think we should... you know. I don't want to fuck us up. Literally."

Despite himself, he smiles with half his mouth.

"That's fair."

She smiles back, still hesitant.

"So." She clears her throat and stands, shifting her weight nervously. "I was going to go see what I could find for a midnight snack. What do you say, _friend_? Want to join me?"

"As long as it's not algae I'm in, _buddy_."

Her smile grows, turning teasing. It takes his breath away.

"No promises, pal."

He grins back.

"Lead the way, chum."

It's not as easy as that. As one emotion-laden conversation, followed by careful jokes and picking all the best nuts out of the bag Murphy has been hoarding, showing off to see who can catch the most in their mouth while still dropping their smiles to the floor and averting eye contact when they let their guard down too far. There's still an awkwardness they can't shake and ingrained anxieties rearing their ugly heads, but Bellamy goes to sleep with a soft smile on his face that feels hopeful.

The next morning he joins her at breakfast as he has every day for the past week, only this time, she meets his eyes and they exchange small nods. Madi watches the exchange with narrowed eyes, aware that something significant has shifted but not quite able to place it.

"Out of questions?" He asks her, brows raised skeptically, after a few minutes of silence. As expected, she scowls.

"Never. Tell me about Prometheus."

He thinks of his last conversation with Octavia and his heart aches for a moment. But then Clarke catches his eye with an expression of understanding and it beats again. His voice is rough to his own ears, sad, and Madi is probably the only one who can't hear that undertone when he asks, "What do you want to know?"

After breakfast, Monty catches up with him as they head to flesh out their plans to deal with Eligius, laying one scarred hand on Bellamy's shoulder.

"You good, man?"

Ahead of them, Clarke turns her head slightly, as if wanting to hear the answer. The tightness in Bellamy's chest loosens further and he breathes deep, giving Monty a rueful smile.

"Better today than yesterday," he says, and catches the hints of relief on Clarke's face before she turns it back toward the corridor ahead.

\-----

It gets easier.

Honestly, the threat of the Eligius settlement as it expands and further lessens their resources contributes hugely. They don't have time to be awkward with each other, there's too much to _do_. It forces them to interact, to argue, even. That shouldn't be as comforting to Bellamy as it is, but then he'll see the fire in Clarke's eyes, the way the rigidity has left her posture and he'll be grateful for it.

He continues trying to prove that he'll be there for her, that he won't push her away anymore, and in doing so remembers something he always forgot about putting in effort: that the well of willpower runs deeper than he knows, that if he keeps drawing from that well, even if he expects it to run dry, it will tap into depths he didn't know existed. The more effort he puts in, the more he finds he is able to put in, until it isn't a conscious thing at all. It's just living his life, being there for Clarke, reaping the rewards of countless hours of practice by getting better at it every day.

Despite the external threats, he feels as if things between him and Clarke are settling in a way that feels comforting. They'll be okay. Great, even. And if this is all he ever gets - to be her friend, to be her partner, to make sure she's alive and well - then it's more than he could have hoped for.

If they were at any lesser place, he might not have asked to accompany her on her routine trip out to check on the other bunker, the one where his sister and her mother and hundreds of others are still trapped, hopefully still alive. Of course he would have _wanted_ to go with her, both for O's sake and to know that Clarke was safe. But the thought of spending an entire day just the two of them might have daunted him too much.

As it is, she just nods and tosses him the keys to the Rover. She's had a lot of fun the past couple of weeks, teasing him about the lapses in his memory. Calling him an old man and grinning when he scowls. (He might scowl all the more just to see her smile, but that can't be proven.)

To see for himself how hopeless the site looks is staggering. Clarke hovers close to him, slipping her hand into his and resting her head on his shoulder when her touch only brings him closer to breaking down.

"You got her out from under the floor once," she murmurs. "You can do it again."

"That move got my mom floated, O locked up, and my job taken away."

"Nobody's perfect."

He snorts in lieu of a real response.

"Besides," she adds, lacing her fingers between his. "You have me this time."

He squeezes her hand and lets go, putting distance between them before he gets too comfortable.

"Yeah. I do."

The ride back is somber, even the overcast sky seeming to catch onto the mood. At least, that's all the thought he gives to the weather until fat drops of rain begin to splatter against the windshield in rapid succession.

"Shit." Clarke scrambles for her sketchbook, one of the pages containing a map she'd made as she carefully explored the territory of Eden over the years. "We need to take shelter. Now."

"It's just a little shower. What's the big deal?"

"Storms have been more volatile since Praimfiya."

"Black rain?"

"No, just... intense. Scarily so."

"Okay." He tightens his grip on the wheel. "Tell me where to go."

She steers them to a cave that's situated on the other side of the Eligius camp from their bunker, but he trusts Clarke's assessment that it's necessary and she turns out to be right. Before they even get there lighting is cracking across the sky, thunder rumbling like bombs overhead. The rain starts to come down in sheets, too hard for them to see more than a few feet ahead of them at a time, and the wind shakes even the heavy Rover on its axles.

It's a miracle they make it to the cave without crashing into anything, the mouth of it just wide enough to pull the Rover into its shelter. The vehicle manages to block a lot of the incoming rain, but Bellamy sets about hanging tarps for more cover as Clarke starts a fire. There's no point in getting out of the rain only for them to get sick or even hypothermic.

He's wrangling the final corner of the last tarp when Clarke appears by his side, holding it down for him to hammer in the stake.

Her hands cover his and though they're chilly, it warms him to his core. By the time everything is finally set, they're both soaked and shivering. She goes to tug him back behind the tarps, but he resists.

"I'm gonna get a few supplies from the car. You go start getting warm."

"If you're not inside in two minutes, I'm coming to get you."

His lips quirk. "Yes ma'am."

His arms are full of blankets and provisions when he does return, well within the two-minute mark. Clarke rushes to take them from him and he tries not to notice how she's already stripped out of her outer layers of drenched clothing. She's down to a camisole that clings to her damp skin and through which he can clearly see her bra, and her standard pair of underwear. It's practical, he reminds himself, fighting his body's natural reaction. It's survival. And it's nothing he hasn't seen before.

None of it helps much.

"I radioed the bunker," he says, voice gruff and businesslike as he averts his gaze and starts divesting himself of his own drenched clothing. It's hard not to feel self-conscious about undressing in front of her, especially given their recent history.

"Told them we got held up by the storm, that we found shelter and we'd see them tomorrow. Madi's going to have a sleepover with Echo and Harper so she won't be alone tonight."

Clarke doesn't respond. When he looks up, he only has a second to notice her teeth sinking into her lower lip, her swallow of decision, before she launches herself at him and slants her mouth over his.

He catches her instinctively, the kiss a mix of pure passion and raw desire. His hand spans her back, the other tangling in her wet hair as she shivers and presses closer. Her body is as soft as it ever was, every inch of her pressed up against him as she coaxes his tongue into the warmth of her mouth.

The kiss is both familiar and completely new. Of all the kisses they shared, bruising and rough, punishing and powerful, none of them felt like this. None of them were this tender, this intimate. Probably because he'd never allowed himself to be as open with her as he is now. The armor he'd constructed had protected him from that, but now her arrow, aimed true, strikes him straight in the spot where he's most vulnerable.

This thought clears the fog from his mind. His hands travel to her sides, pushing her gently away as he breaks the kiss.

"Please don't ask this of me."

His voice comes out softer than he'd like. He keeps his eyes closed, afraid of what he might find on her face.

"You were all too eager to give it to me before," she snaps.

He feels her hands leave her face, her body slip away from his grasp, and has to open his eyes. Has to face the fact that he hurt her. _Again_.

"And it was a bad idea then."

"That doesn't mean it'll be a bad idea now!" She throws her hands up in frustration. "You and I are doing better, right?"

"Yes," he says, desperate. "And I don't want to jeopardize that."

"I don't want to either."

She grows quieter and she takes deep, calming breaths as the initial sting of wounded pride wears off.

"I didn't - " Her voice wavers. "I wasn't trying to break us again. I - The sex was good. Really fucking good. I didn't think - I didn't realize that anything had changed for you in that regard."

She thought he was waiting for her to make a move, he realizes with a pang. She thought he'd be hers for the taking. If only she knew how right she is.

"I'm in love with you."

To say the words is both freeing and frightening. It's even more so when her eyes grow wide but she says nothing.

"I'm in love with you," he repeats, exhaling slowly. "And I can't... do _that_ if being with me isn't something you want. I'm sorry."

Clarke blinks at him, her stare unnerving, and then takes one, two measured steps toward him. She lifts her hands to cradle his face again, bringing his forehead to rest against hers. His eyes flutter closed.

"Say it again."

"Clarke - "

"Please."

He wets his lips.

"I'm in love with you. I love you."

This time her lips are so soft he can't be certain he isn't imagining them. His intake of breath is all sharp edges as she sucks gently on his lower lip before releasing it.

"I'm in love with you too."

The words are whispered reverently, the holiest of prayers. They hang in the air, sacred and miraculous, as Clarke waits for their meaning to fully sink into Bellamy's mind.

His restraint snaps and he crushes her to him, relishing her whimper of relief when their lips meet. It reminds him that she isn't some divine, untouchable thing. She's Clarke. The woman he loves, real and in his arms, as replete with flaws and pain as she is strength and the other wondrous things that make her who she is.

"I love you," she gasps as he tilts her head back to a dizzying angle. "I love you, Bellamy."

He murmurs his own confessions against her lips. Against her cheek, her jaw, her neck. Anywhere and everywhere he can reach, never straying too long from her mouth. He isn't even sure what he's saying half the time, he's so intoxicated by her. All he knows is that as he bares his soul, she shivers and clings to him impossibly tighter. With every word that rumbles across her skin, as low and powerful as the thunder rolling outside, he can feel the emotion she pours into the kiss, the love and the trust and all of the things he never thought he would get to have.

Her arms lock around his shoulders. His band around her waist. They've been driven apart by so many things for so long, all they want is to reclaim that space between them, to close that gap.

And it feels closed, truly and completely, for the first time. They're in sync as they ever were, her heart beating in time with his where their chests are flush against each other, her fingers carding soothingly through his hair when he pauses to collect himself, his lips pressed to her pulse point and his fingers digging into her sides.

She draws him back into it with soft touches, the sweep of her lips against his temple, his cheek, his jaw. Her hands smooth over the plane of his shoulders, caressing and reassuring. She hoists herself up and he catches her with sure hands when she locks her legs around his waist.

Even though she's the one held aloft in his arms, trusting that he won't drop her, that he won't let her go, Bellamy feels a sense of inexplicable safety as Clarke wraps herself around him. As she tilts his chin up to meet her lips, as she swallows his gasps and loosens wet strands of hair that are still stuck to his face.

It has never been like this between them, not in any of the secret rendezvous and illicit touches they shared before. He feels as if he's discovering her for the first time.

He pushes a hand beneath her camisole, needing to feel her skin. As he kisses her shoulder, dragging flimsy straps aside with his teeth, Clarke nuzzles into the crook of his neck. His bite sinks against the same spot as she ruts against him, a needy groan escaping his lips when the flex of her legs and ass under his hand makes her center drag against his stiffening cock.

"Impatient," he murmurs. She nips at his ear.

"We've waited long enough, don't you think?"

He hums his assent, staggering to his knees atop the blanket Clarke had already spread by the fire. It isn't clear to him whether she was planning for this or if she just wanted somewhere soft to sit while they warmed by the small fire. Either way, he's glad for it.

He tips forward, easing Clarke onto her back beneath him. Her eyes flicker, reflecting the golden firelight and something else as he settles into the cradle of her hips and studies her with every last one of his walls crumbled to dust between them.

She lifts a hand to his face, stroking her thumb over his cheekbone.

"What?" He asks, turning his head to kiss her wrist.

Clarke shakes her head.

"I trust you," she says softly. "I just... wanted you to know that."

He smiles, his heart so full it might burst, and leans down to catch her lips with his own. They part for him, malleable as he shapes the kiss into something loving and sweet.

He knows there will be times for them to be rough, to be playful and teasing, to laugh their way through fucking or channel their frustrations with this world into something cathartic. This is not one of those times. Bellamy knows she has forgiven him, as astounding as it may be to wrap his mind around, but that doesn't mean he wants to stop proving to her that this is different than before. That _he's_ different. That he loves her, and will be at her side for as long as she'll have him.

Clarke seems to understand, allowing him to set the pace and kiss her like it's the main event. Her hand stays on his face and the other finds his where it wraps around her thigh, lacing their fingers together as if all she wants is to be close.

Bellamy lets a sense of calm wash over his mind. The rhythmic pounding of rain on rock and the crackle of the fire and Clarke's steady breaths are all he can hear; the salt on her lips all he can taste. He is overwhelmed by her and she's barely touched him yet.

When he can't stand it anymore, he begins to kiss down her neck, across her sternum and collarbones, everywhere he can reach as he moves down her body. With the hand not twined in hers, he nudges the hem of her camisole higher, bathing the freshly revealed skin in kisses as he goes. He maps her with his mouth, the rise and fall of her ribs, the firm, smooth skin of her abs, the dip of her belly button, and her breath hitches when he presses a kiss just below it, above the waistband of her underwear.

He looks up at her, still mouthing at her torso. Her eyes are hooded, her smile disbelieving. It grows a little larger when she feels his lips curve upward in response against her skin.

Before he can sense what she's about to do, she crunches up to pull her camisole over her head. He feels the flex of her muscles under his lips as she goes, his mind going blank for a beat.

"Not to rush you," she teases gently, reaching for the clasp on her bra. "But you're taking too long."

Bellamy's lips skate along bare skin as he moves back up her body.

"Excuse me for enjoying myself too much."

He takes her hands in hers and guides them away from where she's trying to undo the tiny hooks holding her bra closed, drawing them up next to her head instead.

"I think you'd enjoy my way too."

Her words trail off in a gasp when he rocks his length slowly against her, layers of thin fabric between them but still good enough to make her eyes close and her mouth drop open. Bellamy plants kisses on her gaping jaw, working his way to her ear.

"I don't doubt it," he rasps, lipping at the shell of her ear, giving her the barest scrape of teeth before he pulls away. "Though I was kind of looking forward to undressing you myself."

Clarke swivels her hips beneath him, slow and tantalizing.

"Then get to it."

Bellamy slides his hands down her arms to her sides. Her breasts spill out of her bra the moment he gets it unhooked, soft skin raised with goosebumps after the cold rain, nipples pebbled with anticipation. For a moment he just stares, letting his warm breath fan across her skin. Clarke may be human through and through, but he can't imagine any goddess more beautiful than the woman spread beneath him.

Before she can grow impatient under his gaze again, he lowers his head to her skin and kisses a beauty mark on her breast that matches the one above her lip. Clarke arches her back to meet his lips, her breathing growing ragged as he reacquaints himself with them. He never had the opportunity to do this before, to take his time with her, to learn her body. He'd never had the chance to linger at all when he was more worried about keeping his feelings locked away. Now he goes slow, committing to memory the shape and weight of them, their softness, the noises it elicits when he drags his tongue in swirls around, but never touching, her nipple.

Clarke is squirming by the time he laps at the stiffened peak, giving her the attention she craves as his hand plays with the other one lightly. A wanton moan gets strangled in the back of her throat and Bellamy looks up, only to see that she's biting hard on her lower lip. He leans in and tugs it free with a kiss, sweeping his tongue along the spot where her teeth have left a dent.

"You don't have to keep it in," he reminds her, his grin wide and soft as she comes back to herself.

He moves both hands to her face, smoothing down her hair where it has become mussed. Clarke blinks up at him, eyes darker than he's ever seen.

"Then how come you've been so quiet?" She asks, a note of jest in her voice. Her fingers dance up his sides, learning the feel of him. "I would have taken you for a talker if I didn't know any better."

Bellamy laughs and kisses her again.

"You want me to talk dirty to you, Princess?"

She hums against his lips. "I really do. Or just - anything, honestly." He pulls back and she twists the hair at the nape of his neck in her fingers. "It's nice to hear your voice," she admits, like this is some hard confession for her to make. To ask for something for herself.

The next kiss is deep and lingering, the kind that makes toes curl and heads spin. His dick twitches and they both groan.

"Fuck. Whatever you want, Clarke. Anything."

She arches her hips and he moans again, dropping an openmouthed kiss to her neck.

"I want you in me," she husks.

Bellamy huffs, his laughter equal parts amusement and awe.

"I think we can manage that."

A devilish grin appears on his face as he slides down her body. The moment he hooks his fingers into the band of her undershorts and tugs, he can smell her arousal. His hands slow as he savors the moment, the scent of her, the feel of her strong, beautiful legs under his fingers.

"And which part of me do you want inside of you?"

His touch runs up and down her parted thighs as he kisses the jut of her hip bones. He slips a hand between her legs, spreading her glistening folds apart. Her walls clench, whether with self-consciousness or need, he can't be sure.

"Fingers?" He prompts, tracing her entrance with one.

She clenches again and he has to taste her. He runs his tongue up her slit, a slow drag that makes her whimper.

"Mouth?" He murmurs against her clit. Clarke keens and he hums appreciatively, knowing the vibration of his voice will feel good against her with how swollen and flushed her folds are after all the time he spent playing with her breasts. "Mouth," he agrees, leaning in to suck her clit between his lips.

His fingers stroke over her outer lips as he feasts on the sensitive bud, exploring her wetness with a gentle touch to ground her even as his tongue sends her flying. Clarke's hips stutter, smearing herself across his chin, and Bellamy has to wrap an arm around her waist to hold her still for him.

"I've got you," he promises, flicking his tongue over her clit to test whether she can buck out of his hold. She tries, but can't move much in his grasp.

He licks into her more forcefully this time, giving her broad strokes up her slit and teasing her clit with every pass. Her pretty noises feed his eagerness, shutting out anything else around him. All that exists in this moment is the two of them, his face buried in her pussy, her hands raking down her own body to find his where he's holding her still and open. She fits her arm overtop his on her belly, the fingers of her other hand interspersing his on her knee, and Bellamy is overcome for a moment with fondness for her.

"Love you," he breathes, not even certain she's coherent enough to understand. "Love getting my hands on you, my mouth. Love the way you taste, Princess. I've never been able to forget it."

Her next cry is a little more broken as he loosens his hold on her hips and she starts grinding against his mouth, quick and desperate. Stroking his hands across her skin in slow motions to calm her, he holds his tongue flat against her so she can take what she needs from him. With his urging, her pace becomes less frantic. A sensual glide of his mouth from her entrance to her clit, over and over again, until he feels her walls start to clench.

Bellamy slips one finger into her, easy as anything, offering her something to clench down on. Clarke's motions stay sharp and slow, but the up and down flex of her hips becomes a swivel that keeps his tongue working tight circles on her clit. He feels the moment when everything inside her goes taut, and then she's riding out her orgasm with an intensity that makes his cock throb with need.

His eyes stay trained on her face as he works her through it, her limbs going limp with the trust that he'll take care of her.

"So beautiful." His voice is like gravel, choked up with need and emotion together. "So fucking incredible, watching you come for me like that. _Fuck_."

She whimpers and squirms in his grip. "Get up here."

He clambers back up and Clarke's hands go immediately to his briefs, pushing disjointedly at them until he laughs and helps her tug them over his ass and off. Her gaze focuses in on his erection with a single-minded desire. Pushing him over onto his side, she follows quickly, propping herself above him on one elbow as she reaches her other hand down to grip his cock and give it a loose stroke.

"Jesus. Fuck." His eyes slam closed as she gathers a spurt of precome and uses it to ease the glide of her hand on his shaft.

"That's the idea," she agrees.

He feels her everywhere - mouth settling on his chest, fingers scratching lightly against his scalp, hand jacking him with confidence, her taste still on his lips - but he can't bring himself to open his eyes. They might have rolled back in his head, that's how worked up he got eating her out, how much he likes her touch.

Clarke's kisses travel across his chest at random, as if each time she finds a new spot upon which to alight, she sees one equally tempting somewhere else. When she begins to make her way down his body, the ends of her short-chopped hair brushing against his navel, his eyes pop open of their own accord.

"Fuck," he repeats. Possibly the only word left in his vocabulary. "You don't have to - "

"I know I don't. I want to."

He combs her hair away from her face, gathering it in one hand so he can see the mischief in her eyes as she straddles his legs. Her cunt is wet and sticky on his shin and he moans, any other arguments lost when she puts her mouth directly on his dick.

She makes an appreciative sound at his taste, eyes closing like she wants to savor it. It's an obscene sight, Clarke with her pretty lips wrapped around him, her hands braced on his thighs as she takes him further and further into her mouth, acting like he's the best thing she's ever tasted. Bellamy squeezes his eyes shut, hand tightening in her hair because if he keeps watching he's going to come embarrassingly fast.

He gasps when she releases him with a wet sound, not having realized he was even holding his breath.

"Talk to me, Bell." She gives him kitten licks, her nails digging into the skin of his hips just enough to bring him back to the moment. "Tell me how you're feeling."

"Fuck, Princess. Your mouth is the best fucking thing I've ever felt."

She hums and gives herself a wiggle that makes her folds slide along his leg.

"Like this?" She asks, taking just the head back into her mouth. Bellamy's free hand is gripping the blanket tightly, fingers aching from the strain.

"Shit, yeah, Clarke. Just like that. God. Your mouth is so sweet, so perfect."

She flickers her tongue against his frenulum and he sucks in a breath, using the hand in her hair to guide her off him and back up to where he can kiss her. A low sound of approval vibrates in her chest when she tastes herself on his tongue. Bellamy uses that moment of weakness to flip them over again, his arms trapped beneath her as they clutch at her waist and the back of her head. Clarke's knees come up automatically, her feet brushing against the sensitive skin on the backs of his thighs.

"I thought my mouth was perfect," she teases, panting as he rocks against her slick core.

Bellamy captures her lips in a slow, sultry kiss. They're both so wound that this could easily devolve into a chaotic fuck, both of them chasing what they need. But he reminds himself that isn't what he wants. This is about the two of them together, not taking from each other, but giving. Growing and creating something new between them instead of each trying to make the other come undone.

"It is," he rasps. "So perfect, so good to me. But I want _you_."

Despite his inelegant explanation, Clarke seems to understand. Her hands stroke his shoulders, his biceps, as if to say he can let go of the strain in them, let his weight settle on top of her. He does, sure he's crushing her, but she sighs into his mouth and wraps herself further around him, holding him close.

"You have me," she promises. "I'm yours."

He brushes his lips against her jaw.

"Mine, huh?"

He hopes she won't notice the way his voice trembles but her eyes soften and her kiss as chaste as it can be with every indecent part of themselves in full contact.

"Yours," she repeats, reaching down to guide him to her entrance. His breath hitches as his tip enters her and she strokes her thumb along his temple. "And you're mine."

"I am," he agrees, pushing into her a little further and kissing away the wetness that gathers in the corners of her eyes.

Starting shallow and slow, Bellamy deepens his reach inside of her each time he pushes into the snug, velvet clutch of her cunt. There isn't much space between them, just enough for every thrust to cause a wave of pleasure to roll up Clarke's body, her nipples getting the friction they need against the hard planes of his chest, her mouth open against his. It couldn't exactly be called a kiss. They're too enraptured for that. Instead they pass a breath back and forth, noses brushing, until Bellamy is fully seated inside of her.

He takes a moment to gather his wits. If Clarke's mouth is perfection, being buried inside of her is as close to transcendence as he'll ever get. He can feel each ripple of movement as she draws her knees higher around his body, groaning when he hits a spot that has her clenching even tighter.

He can see the demand to move forming on her lips and it breaks his trance. The silky stroke of her as he draws his hips back, and then the warm, tight fit as he comes home again has them both moaning in ecstasy. Her head tips backward, exposing the long column of her neck. It's impossible for him to look away as she swallows hard on his next withdrawal, and he lets his tongue trace her smooth, pale skin as he enters her again.

Her jaw falls open and he bites at her chin, harder than he means to when she rolls her hips.

The world turns soft and golden around the edges, fading away until all he can see is Clarke's eyes locked on his, her expression of bliss, the love in her gaze. Given how hard he was before they even started, he's amazed at how long they draw it out, keeping the slow, deep pace without giving into his body's need for more friction.

He's never done anything before he could even remotely call 'making love,' but if that isn't what he and Clarke are doing, he doesn't know what that could possibly be like. Every last cell in his body is alight with how much he loves this woman. He couldn't convince her of that with his body any more than he already has if he tried.

But they can't keep their orgasms at bay forever. He feels it gathering in his toes, tingling in his veins, ready to burst out of him. Clarke's control also appears to be unraveling, if her moans growing louder and more lecherous are any indication. His vision starts to cloud over, like his brain has been stuffed full of cotton. Ears ringing with her voice, throat choked up with affection, he wedges a hand between them, brushing against her clit just in time for them to come together.

The pulsing of her walls around him seems to last _forever_. Bellamy keeps his hand moving long after he's spent, lips pressed to the hollow of her cheek as she shatters. Her cheeks are pink, her eyes hooded and sparkling when she opens them again. Bellamy slips out of her with a brief kiss, tugging her to melt against his chest when she makes an unhappy noise at their separation.

They don't speak for a long while, at least not in words. They speak in touches, her fingers writing sonnets on his skin, his working the knots out of her hair and stroking heavy across her side.

When the rain starts to slow outside she looks up at him, her eyes full with too many things to put into words. She pours all of it into a kiss.

It's _I missed you_ and _I love you_ and _I'm yours_ all at once, sweet and yearning and not nearly enough of Clarke to last him for the rest of his life.

They kiss until they can't keep it up any longer, until sleep and satisfaction and something Bellamy might even dare to call contentment start to drag them under. He kisses her hair and drags another blanket overtop of them, smiling when he feels Clarke's eyes drift closed.

They've still got a lot ahead of them - Eligius to deal with, the twelve hundred to free, a kid to raise and a handful of ex-delinquents to lead. But for now, they have time to just be. To be themselves again, to be together, to become something new. And when morning arrives, they'll face whatever comes, side by side. Together, once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks! I have so loved experimenting with angst and basically preparing myself for the angst to come in season 5. Thank you all for reading and for the lovely comments and kudos you've left along the way. You guys are the best!
> 
> And as I have other ideas I'd love to work on now that I've finished this, I hope to see you all soon ;)

**Author's Note:**

> Tried to make sure it was obvious they both consented but definitely tell me if I missed the mark. Also hmu with the kudos and comments if you liked it!
> 
> (Spoiler alert: these two are in love and there will be an eventual happy ending)


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